This is the best I’ve been able to do — using the label guides here:

http://kamakahawaii.com/support/dating-your-uke.html

Kamaka Labels & Their Dates

I have my mom’s Kamaka soprano from around 1962-1963 and the gold label looks like the ones pictured here for that age range.

Hope this helps,
Alan

Aloha UU ‘Ohana,

Last week while chatting with Uncle Led on his morning live stream the idea of writing a song about the waves crashing on the beach came up. At first I was more focused on the literal sound of the waves and not coming up with ideas I was happy with, but while experimenting with some different chord progressions for this song writing challenge I started getting the feeling of sitting on the shore watching the waves coming up and down. Here’s a first take at it — what image comes to mind for you?

Chords used: G, C, D7, Am, Bm with some extensions from the open strings.

Now to work on some more variations of the theme…

Mahalo,
Alan

We had a second performance by the Ukulele Flatirons Orchestra (UFO). Here’s St. James Infirmary Blues, during which I took a solo over a verse followed by Charlie on a chorus — I found after improving a few times, I started to get an idea of where I wanted to go, but it always turns out a little different each time. Pretty happy with how it came out, but always welcome constructive criticism:

Another piece we’ve been working on for a while is a 5-part arrangement a couple of our members brought back from a James Hill workshop — what started the whole idea of us getting together and practicing multi-part arrangements, but it’s taken us a while to get this one down enough to try playing it in front of other people:

Hope you enjoy.

-Alan

I ended up coming up with some ideas while we were coming up with the challenge, so I thought I’d better get my ideas down before forgetting them:

A little rough, but hopefully I’ll have time to refine it and post an updated version in a few weeks. I’m finding that the act of recording these helps a lot because I go back and listen to them, the better parts get stuck in my head and I expand on those ideas.

Looking forward to what everyone comes up to — these have been a lot of fun!

Mahalo,
Alan

Kawai,

Love it! I really like the dynamics transitioning from the picking section to the strumming and back — made me want more! It has a similar feel to the Lava song.
Your uke sounds great too.

-Alan

Kahai,

I actually think I should setup a recording anytime I’m messing around — would love to have a way to record a 10-minute loop that I could just stop if I come up with something I like and I could save it. Most of the time I feel it comes out better before I record. ;D Would love to hear how you progress in your songwriting — I’ve been listening to the Undertale soundtrack a lot (my kid’s favorite) and listening to how Toby Fox layered motifs to come up with an amazing array of songs, so I’d love to hear from you how you step through adding the different parts and putting it together.

Jonathan,

That’s cool — I appreciate you sharing, getting an inspiration on that last song helped me develop it more. I have a lot of memories from May Day as well, but it was a little different in Hawai’i. The 6th graders would represent each island like a Hawaiian royal court and the rest of the grades would perform dances and songs for the court. I hated it at the time, but looking back it was pretty cool.

Not in the right key for this challenge and no minor chords, but I started thinking of how I could mess around with the tuning a bit more and ended up in the equivalent of Open D on ‘ukulele, which comes out as Open G, here’s some improvisation around that tuning I was doing last night:

A hui hou,
Alan

I decided to play around with Taro Patch tuning on my log-G ‘ukulele:

This first one was a quick sound check, but I ended up liking parts of it so thought I’d upload it.

Here’s the longer version:

I thought I’d use a IV iv I vamp like in White Sandy Beach as the main turnaround.

-Alan

Thanks Ryan!

BTW, Kahai gave me a K-Town Heroes CD, Eat Sleep Music Sessions — been enjoying listening to it, it’s fun to have some of Aldrine’s music from back in the day when you were his guitar player. Aaron’s pretty good, but I get to hear him play all the time. =P

-Alan

Remind me to take a look/listen next time I see you — be interested to see what you find out.

-Alan

Jonathan,

I’m playing at the open mics at Denver UkeFest — I’ll ask a friend to take some video and post it on the forum, that does sound fun. There are a few others from UU+ that usually show up, but not sure who’s playing, but I’ll probably catch up with them at the UU table or in some of the workshops.

BTW, been working on “Campfire Song” (also working on a better title). Tried adding some variations, and a 3rd paniolo with in the bass line:

-Alan

Kawai,

Congrats! The slide adds a nice touch — would love to see you incorporate it back into the song at a later verse, or maybe an outro?

Jonathan,

Thanks for the ideas — I’m starting to blend your ideas with mine and coming up with the image of some Paniolo sitting by the campfire after herding cattle all day talking story.

-Alan

Jonathan,

Mahalo for the kind words — if you were to imagine that movie scene, what would be happening? Your comment made me think of something, but I’m curious what images come to mind for you. Nice job with your song BTW, love that you went for it and did a dance!

Kahai,

I’ve been messing around with the same theme a bit more — trying to get more of a droning effect with the bass strings like the long sustain of the singing bowls, the hard part I’m having is finding a balance between that and the melody, but I’m sure it’ll balance out eventually, even if it’s not the original concept that inspired me.

I’ll throw my Yamaha in the car in case there’s time for a lesson or just messing around a bit — I’d love to show you a few things — I just love open tunings and feel lost when I pick up a guitar in standard tuning. I’ll e-mail you a packet I put together for a slack key workshop in January.

Malama pono,
Alan

I keep having the problem of coming up with ideas I like, but then when I go to record them can’t remember all of them — that and I never seem to really “finish” them. In any case, in order to make up for that I thought I’d include 3 partly-finished songs for partial-credit:

Decided to try some 12-bar Blues in A — A7, D7, E7.

I also had the thought to play in taro patch on my guitar and capo up 2 frets to A, but it just didn’t sound as good, so here’s a I V7 song in G instead:

And since I didn’t care so much for capoing up, I thought I’d go the other way — inspired by listening to some Tibetan changing and singing bowls, I set my tuner to A432 and detuned a half step to F#. This one has I IV and V7 in it:

A hui hou,
Alan

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Alan Fasick.

Thanks for the kind words. I feel I’m pretty good with coming up with ideas, but not so good at finishing them to the point of calling it a song — now I’m motivated to write down the chord progression, work out some of those rough spots and settle in on a main theme a bit more. I also want to work on adding more to the bass line instead of the basic 1 5 bass on the G and 5 5 on the D.

Daniel, that’s just my 6-string baritone ‘ukulele, the camera angle makes it look bigger than it is… =P

-Alan

I figured I’d better write something for this since it fits taro patch so nicely. I experimented with some themes I have been playing with off and on and tried to add some variation. A few rough spots need to be worked out, and I couldn’t quite decide on the chord progression, I was going for something like G G G G, D D D G, D G but didn’t always hit the tag at the end of each verse. I think I slipped into G G D G, G G D G, D G — a chord pattern I like messing around with — on at least one verse.

Hope you like it — haven’t thought of a name yet:

-Alan